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Weather:
- Daily weather briefing from the National Weather Service in Jacksonville here.
- Drought conditions here. (What is the Keetch-Byram drought index?).
- Check today’s tides in Daytona Beach (a few minutes off from Flagler Beach) here.
- Tropical cyclone activity here, and even more details here.
Today at a Glance:
Conversations in Democracy: An open, freewheeling discussion on topics here in our community, around Florida and throughout the United States, noon to 1 p.m. at Pine Lakes Golf Club Clubhouse Pub & Grillroom (no purchase is necessary), 400 Pine Lakes Pkwy, Palm Coast (0.7 miles from Belle Terre Parkway). Call (386) 445-0852 for best directions. All are welcome! Everyone’s voice is important. For further information email [email protected] or call Merrill at 804-914-4460.
The Circle of Light Course in Miracles study group meets at a private residence in Palm Coast every Wednesday at 1:20 PM. There is a $2 love donation that goes to the store for the use of their room. If you have your own book, please bring it. All students of the Course are welcome. There is also an introductory group at 1:00 PM. The group is facilitated by Aynne McAvoy, who can be reached at [email protected] for location and information.
Geminizing: I asked Gemini to give me 10 of Pascal’s Pensées if Trump were tweeting them:
THE GREAT WAGER
People say you can’t prove God. Maybe! But if you bet ON him and win, you win EVERYTHING. If you lose, you lose nothing. Smart people take that deal. It’s called winning!
THE FLOATING ROCK
We are all just hanging out in the middle of nowhere. Infinite space on one side, tiny atoms on the other. Very scary stuff. Most people can’t handle it. I handle it better than anyone!
STAY AT HOME
All of humanity’s problems come from one thing: men who can’t sit still in a quiet room. They have to go out and cause trouble. Sad!
THE THINKING REED
Man is just a reed, the weakest thing in nature. But he’s a THINKING reed. The universe could crush him, but the man would still be better because he knows he’s dying. The universe knows nothing!
FAKE HAPPINESS
People spend their whole lives chasing vacations and parties. They’re just trying to distract themselves from thinking about how short life is. Total losers! Get to work!
JUSTICE AND MIGHT
Justice without power is helpless. Power without justice is tyranny. We need to make sure justice is strong and strength is just. We’re going to do it!
TWO EXTREMES
If you tell people they’re just like animals, they get nasty. If you tell them they’re like angels, they get proud. You have to tell them the truth. It’s a disaster!
IMAGINATION
The imagination is a total fraud. It makes little things look huge and huge things look tiny. Don’t let it trick you. Stay focused on the big numbers!
THE HEART’S REASONS
The heart has its reasons that reason knows nothing about. We know it in a lot of things. Very true!
VANITY
We want to live an imaginary life in the minds of others. We care more about what people think than who we actually are. A total vanity project. Weak!
The Live Calendar is a compendium of local and regional political, civic and cultural events. You can input your own calendar events directly onto the site as you wish them to appear (pending approval of course). To include your event in the Live Calendar, please fill out this form.
April 2026
Conversations in Democracy
The Circle of Light A Course in Miracles Study Group
Flagler Beach United Methodist Church Food Pantry
Flagler County Drug Court Convenes
Model Yacht Club Races at the Pond in Palm Coast’s Town Center
“The Sound of Music,” at Athens Theatre
For the full calendar, go here.
From our picture of the Renaissance, its rapacity and crime, its bewildering profusion of baseness, bloodshed and unsettling violence, the reader may well wonder why it was that art flourished so magnificently, There is no absolute explanation. No one knows precisely why art is produced, why Michael Angelo, at such a terrific cost of mental agony, forfeiting all the pleasures of companionship and good living, sold himself to endless creative toil, why Donatello and Brunelleschi, penniless and starving, went off to Rome in their youth to spend their days and nights digging among the bones of antiquity. But this we do know: art inheres in the human soul and under certain conditions manifests itself with extraordinary fertility. Impulses, which, for want of a more definite name, are called spiritual, demand fulfilment, and the artist, viewing the gross activities of life with reason and contemplation, finds order in lawless violence, significance in all experiences and permanence in transitory events. What circumstances are favorable to art is a question we will not attempt to decide. It is, I think, beyond dispute that when man is most free, when no artificial restraints are imposed upon him and it is possible for him to develop his individuality to its fullest capacities, that art is most likely to thrive. Does anyone suppose for a moment, considering the incomparable wealth and variety of Italian art, that such monumental records of imaginative power could have been produced by a civilization that ran along with the humdrum regularity of a Swiss village? The grandeur of Michael Angelo has its analogue in the grandeur of Julius II; we remember Cesare Borgia for his appalling brutality, but the frescoes of Andrea del Castagno contain similar qualities of terrible energy and vengeance; the fanaticism of Savonarola is matched by Ucello’s obsession with the scientific problems of perspective; the sexual proclivities of Alexander VI are not more notorious than those of Cellini; the spirit of mysticism and simple faith, before it was extinguished in the hearts of the ineffectual minority, found its perfect spokesman in Fra Angelico; at the other end of the scale, the elegant and sophisticated tastes of Leo X created a congenial atmosphere for the classical decorum of Raphael. Today we demand more stability and less art, and we may be assured that whenever life is secure and uneventful, art in the aggregate is bound to be a reflex of commonplace experiences.
–From Thomas Craven’s Men of Art (1931).
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